Category: Central/Eastern Europe

Cyber-attacking the civil in civil society

     

In the face of authoritarian foreign influence* operations, the U.S. Congress should support public-private partnerships to tackle the challenge posed by disinformation and abuse of social media platforms, according to… Read more »

Democracies under duress from ‘global menace’ of populism

     

The populist threat to democracy “would be sure to grow” unless policy-makers address changes in the nature of employment and “rebuild the links among work, opportunity, and economic security,” according… Read more »

What happened in Hungary?

     

The self-appointed champion of illiberalism, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán did much to engineer this week’s election result in Hungary. But as Réka Kinga Papp notes in her take on the… Read more »

Trouble brewing in the Balkans

     

It has been more than two decades since I worked with Richard Holbrooke and our team to negotiate an end to the war in Bosnia. NATO deployed and then acted… Read more »

EU counter-disinformation efforts ‘in disarray’?

     

Having squandered solidarity in the Skripal case, the EU is fighting Russian propaganda at the same time as its experts fight among themselves about how, Deutsche Welle reports: Jakub Janda,… Read more »

Nations in Transit 2018: Confronting Illiberalism

     

  Please join Freedom House and the German Marshall Fund of the United States for the launch of the 2018 edition of Nations in Transit, Freedom House’s annual report on the… Read more »

Russia looks to Balkans as a battlefield in ‘political war’ with the West

     

With migration, Russian aggressiveness and Brexit, the European Union is taking the western Balkans seriously again, the New York Times reports: The bloc’s strategy for the Western Balkans, published in February,… Read more »

Hungary’s election result ‘disproves resilience of democratic institutions’?

     

  Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party signalled on Monday it could push on with legislation to crack down on organisations promoting migrant rights as soon as parliament reconvenes after Prime Minister… Read more »

Anatomy of hybrid warfare: how disinformation corrodes democracies

     

  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed contrition for allowing third-party apps to grab the data of its users without their permission and for being “too slow to spot and respond… Read more »

Is EU ‘enabling’ Hungary’s authoritarian kleptocracy?

     

Hungary is no longer a democracy, says Nóra Köves, an activist with the pro-democracy Eötvös Károly Institute. “I wouldn’t say that, no. Not, I think, any more. We are heading to… Read more »